Hape's long road to freedom

In his part of Auckland, that was the best school — so good that his dad was prepared to overlook the fact that it played only union. Shontayne got drawn in and liked it a lot, but it was like smoking or drinking alcohol — something he couldn’t tell his dad about.

Massey High School had an excellent Sevens team and without mentioning anything to his father, Shontayne made that team. They won through to the Nationals and that meant missing league training at his club. His dad wanted an explanation.

“You need to choose the proper path here because if you play both games, you will get burnt out,” his father said. Clear as daylight, the proper path lay before him. Shontayne was captain of the New Zealand Schools team in league, he had been offered a scholarship with New Zealand Warriors, the only professional league set-up in the country, and that would be his future. Playing union felt like two-timing your girlfriend and after that, he concentrated on league. The thing was, that brief affair with union left him smitten.

Iit started as it was meant to with the Warriors. Hape was rookie of the year in his first season in the National Rugby League, but in the second game of his third season he wrecked his right knee, dislocated the patella, tore the cruciate and medial ligaments and destroyed the cartilage. He was 20 and having to deal with something that should have come later.

Endless hours in the gym introduced him to loneliness and to his inner self. “What you feel at first is the frustration of being on the sideline watching people play. With my back to the wall, I developed mental strength, felt a fire burning and I realised I could do anything.”

Later in his league career he would suffer two similarly wretched knee injuries, each necessitating a season out of the game. “I dealt with those by doing a lot of community stuff, visiting hospitals, spending time with people who had cancer and some who were terminally ill. And as much as they appreciated me coming to see them, it helped me as much. I say to any guy who gets a serious injury that it only takes one visit to a hospital to cure your depression.”

The first injury, in 2002, came when he was out of contract with the Warriors and led to a fallout with the club over a new deal. “I was on a very small contract, my agent was trying to do the best for me, the club guys were trying to do the best for the club. You come to realise sport is a business and you’re a piece of meat.

“When the arguments started, I just wanted to get out of there, go to England, play league for two years and then return.” So he landed in Yorkshire, a young Kiwi in need of a fresh start. His planned two years became six and he won everything with the Bradford Bulls. “People ask me where I’m from and, of course, it is Auckland because that is where I grew up, but sometimes I say Yorkshire because I do regard it as home. I miss being up there. It’s got a good homely feel and there were people at the club, proper English families, who invited me around for meals, made me feel welcome.”

Six successful years in league left him seeking a new challenge and after Lesley Vainikolo, his close friend and Bradford teammate, moved to Gloucester, Hape thought about hitching up with that old flame from high school. He went to see Steve Meehan, the head coach at Bath. “Why do you want to change?” he asked.

“I’m after a new challenge.”

“Where do you see yourself in two years?”

“I see myself playing for England.”

“Oh,” said a slightly startled Meehan. “That’s a fair shout.”

Hape paid off the last few months of his contract with Bradford to go through pre-season at Bath and be ready for the start of the union season. “I thought I was ready for the first team but found myself playing games with kids who were at university playing for the United team at Bath. I shouldn’t say too much on this because it felt like there were people holding me back.”

Injuries opened the door and Hape has been inside since then. A six-year resident, he qualified for England. “It doesn’t matter what you do, you want to do it at the highest level. A doctor wants to work in the best hospital, a chef in the top restaurant and I wanted to be on the international stage.”

Two years after joining Bath, he received a call from Martin Johnson. “It came totally out of the blue, he said he was Johnno and I asked if he was for real. ‘This is Martin Johnson’, he said and I knew it was him.”

Nine matches into his England career, he has six wins, three losses and many doubters. There is no creativity in the midfield, no pace, no subtlety and much of the blame is laid at his door.

Hape has heard the dissenting voices. “I think these people don’t really know the game, or they think they know the game but they don’t. I don’t let it get to me. I’m too old for that now. If I was a young guy, maybe...”

He doesn’t run away from criticism. “We didn’t play our best against France. Ah, man, we couldn’t catch a ball in that game but we still ground out a win and that was encouraging. Against Wales, I was to blame for the try Jon Davies set up for Morgan Stoddart. I wanted to get up and smash Jon but I took my eye off him, watched Stephen Jones as he was passing and lost sight of my man.”

What Johnson and defence coach Mike Ford noticed from the stats in that game were the 24 Hape tackles, the highest of any England player and the most he had ever made in a union game. Johnson has expressed bewilderment at the criticism of his inside-centre.

In the squad since last year’s Six Nations Championship, Hape is encouraged by what he has seen. “I don’t see any complacency. We have the determination, the enthusiasm and the will to win, and if you take those three elements into any game, nine times out of 10 they get you over the line.”